Judith Denning is a fallen angel who must endure the green Hell of Horace Prin, King of the River, a white man who not only exploits the labor of the indigenous peoples but enslaves their very culture: he has become the alter they worship upon! Diabolical. But Director Stuart Walker isn’t concerned with making a “message picture” about white entitlement and its poisonous effects upon conflicting societal values and mores, he’s interested in weaving a sordid and violent melodrama about a broken woman who struggles to find her home, wherever that may be.
The film opens with a close-up of Judith (Carole Lombard) crooning a sultry ballad in a seedy foreign tavern: the film’s title immediately becomes a double entendre as she’s caucasian and dressed in a white gown, both magnifying her innocence and betraying it in context of her environment. The camera tracks slowly through the bar to reveal different ethnicities as she sings, before Judith mysteriously breaks away as if summoned by some higher power. Which is exactly what happens: the local Governor (white, of course) banishes her from the country because she, as a white woman, haunts this multiracial bar, revealing his bigoted fears of miscegenation or other intolerable sins like fraternization, I suppose! This racist attitude isn’t criticized it’s just portrayed as typical for the period. Soon, Judith is between a river and a hard place so, after meeting the queerly effeminate Horace Prin (Charles Laughton), decides his home is better than homelessness. Strong willed and independent after her husband’s suicide, she surrenders her body but not herself, if you can grasp the subtle distinction. She soon discovers herself indentured to a slave driver, a cruel man who retains control of his rubber plantation through extortion and violence. Judith is now surrounded by others with criminal pasts unable to escape because the consequences are too horrific. But she falls in love with the overseer David (a deserter, traumatized by his cohort’s severed head thrown at his feet) and finds friendship with Jakey and his companion Dutch, a roguish chimpanzee. But Prin destroys that which betrays him and soon Davis is sent up-river and replaced by the viscous tyrant Ballister who doesn’t pretend to conceal his masochistic and aggressive attraction to our heroine. To his minimal credit, as she continues to rebuff his advances, he eventually accepts her decision and even respects David’s heroic journey through the jungle to warn them of an impending attack.
Charles Laughton’s performance as Prin is exceptional as he is able to portray incredible physical weakness while at the same moment project a devilish persona, seething with self-loathing and torment. His every subtle wink and tick speaks its own language of power and madness. This is a dangerous man not of physical prowess, but devious intelligence not burdened by guilt or remorse. Prin has his men executed, David tortured by another severed head, kills the Anthropopithecus Troglodytes Dutch, serves his slaves rotting food and actually spits in the face of the native chiefs, just because he can. When the uprising arrives, he is prepared with .50 caliber machine guns that spit mana or lead from the gods. He even pretends to allow Judith and David to escape down-river, but the joke is on him: Ballister has filled the boat’s gas tank to capacity and Jakey, in retribution for the death of his simian friend, tosses the machine guns overboard. With death closing in upon them, Prin and Ballister play a game of poker to idle away their last few moments on Earth. And Prin’s final soliloquy to his dead companion, shot in skewed angled close-ups, depicts a madman still facing death on his terms. But the slave master is master, no more.
Final Grade: (B)